We're Little People And We'll Always Be Friends

I love Little People. When I was a kid I had a blue Little People house and a Little People fire station, and how I loved to play with the choking-hazard Little People figures that went with them. Once when we moved cross country I had to part with some of my toys, and one of those was my beloved Little People fire station. To this day I regret getting rid of that toy. My mom still has the rest of my Little People stuff, which my kids play with when they visit Grandma.

When I grew up and had kids of my own, I was thrilled to discover that Fisher Price had re-imagined and modernized Little People. I became maybe a little obsessed with buying Little People sets for my kids. Oh the details! The furniture! The accessories! The endless variety of imaginative scenes to be played out! So we have quite a few Little People toys. Maybe, just maybe, a ridiculous amount of Little People toys.

But when we moved into this house in 2009, five (yes 5!!) days before Mathilda was born, the boxes of Little People went to the storage room in the basement. We have high hopes, you see, of creating a play room for the kids down there. It just hasn't happened yet. 

(But it will! I swear! Hopefully sometime before they've totally outgrown playing with toys altogether. Otherwise our grandkids are going to have a kick ass play room.) 

So the Little People have been living down there ever since, sad and lonely with no one to play with them.  Poor Little People. However, this past Christmas, Mathilda received some new Little People sets. And that reminded the kids that there is a stockpile of these plastic gems in the basement. Yesterday Bethany hauled one of the boxes up to the family room and boy they all went crazy playing with those Little People that have been ignored and neglected for almost two years. The first thing Lucy did when she got up this morning was play Little People. Bethany and Connor can't wait to come home from school today just so they can totally annihilate the family room with Little People. Daddy will be so thrilled. 

 this is just a wee sampling of the Little People mayhem

And I'm about to go hit up Amazon to see which new and exciting Little People toys I can save in my cart for Mathilda's birthday. 

See, Little People, I knew we'd always be friends.

Snow Days and Other Stuff

So far this week my kids have enjoyed two snow days, and it's only Tuesday! I have loved having them home, but they really do need to go back to school so I can finish my Christmas shopping. Well, the small portion of my Christmas shopping that is not done via amazon.com at least. I think I might be done with Amazon actually(maybe one more order...) since it's getting close to the Christmas delivery cut-off with the free shipping. I love Amazon. I tell everyone they should do their Christmas shopping on this glorious one stop shopping conglomerate website. They have, like, everything. Free shipping, no tax, heaven.

Today we spent hours working on making Christmas gifts for teachers and friends and building one of those Star Wars Lego things that have about seven thousand pages of instructions. I meant to get some baking done too, but that didn't happen. But I could get started on that now, since all the kids are up in bed. Yes, that's right, all the kids. Mathilda went to bed with the other kids and is at this moment sleeping in her crib! But by now I am smart and experienced enough to know that she will wake up pathetically wailing just as soon as I get involved with a project. In fact, she probably just received a subliminal message from the internet or something informing her that it's time to make a liar of her mom.

"I'm not sleeping! BAAAAA! How could you think that? I was just lying here waiting for you to get busy with something so I could start screaming and not let you accomplish anything! It's what I do!"

Yes, that is what she does. But that's not all! She also likes to take all the diapers out of the box several times a day, take as much food out of the pantry as she can reach, dump out my purse, draw in books (a fun new hobby!), pull ornaments off the Christmas tree, roll around on the floor in clean clothes before I vacuum (we have a black shedding dog people!), and so much more. Like refusing to nap. Then she ends up falling asleep in the high chair at dinner time, or today she fell asleep while standing up and looking at her current favorite book, Old McDonald. She also doesn't actually like me to read to her, but she loves, loves, loves books. She brings them to me all the time like she wants me to read to her, but then as soon as I take the book from her and start reading, she starts screaming, grabs the book and runs off with it. I can't wait until this child can talk so she can finally let me know what all the fuss was about.

Anyway, snow days are nice, but there is that knowledge in the back of my mind regarding what actually caused the snow days. As in snow. And in this case, also frigid cold temperatures and icy roads. Yuck. I am really not looking forward to leaving the house tomorrow morning. But at least I have a remote start for my van, so I can get it all toasty before we get in it. Of course, I probably forgot to leave the heat on last time I drove since I just cannot seem to remember to do that.

                                                  ***sigh***

I think I need to make one of those paper chain countdown things, counting down the days until Spring. I need a visual reminder that there will not be snow and slush and ice and freezing cold blechy weather forever and ever, because that is kind of what it feels like right now.

For now I will make an effort to focus on things I'm looking forward to. Like meeting a friend for hot chocolate on Thursday morning, and seeing Lucy's preschool Christmas program on Friday morning. And snuggling on the couch with my new, super soft and awesomely cozy blanket I recently received as a gift from a relative I've never met via a family Christmas gift exchange (yep, definitely ridiculously blessed). Which is what I think I'm going to go do right now, while I'm waiting for Mathilda to wake up and remind me that, duh, she doesn't sleep in her crib.